Sandy:

Pre-trip Story

2023 has been the busiest and most stressful year compared to the previous five years. I have worked 11 years at Intel and gained versatile experience in the DRAM memory subsystem from architecture and design to silicon validation and enablement. I had been thinking about moving on and experiencing the work culture and strategies of other semiconductor companies. When at the start of 2023, the announcement of pay-cuts for senior engineers and paused bonuses resulted in paranoia about the future, and I decided to take another offer at a semiconductor hardware startup, Ampere Computing, in February.

I was also advised to take courses relevant to my research work, so I took the Deep Learning course at Portland State University during spring 2023. Through the classes, homework and projects of this course I learned the architecture, mathematical foundation and hands-on application of most of the modern deep learning networks such as ANN, CNN, RNN, LSTM, Transformers and Deep Reinforcement Learning. The course had three homework assignments (mini projects) and three projects packed in a duration of 75 days. The benefit of the course was that I learned and tested my knowledge very quickly as opposed to a self-paced schedule. I scored 99% in my class, by paying a heavy price of sleep deprivation and absolute lack of free time due to ramping up in a new company during the day and learning and applying new concepts learned in the class, at night.

I also planned to take my first stage exams of PhD, the dreaded qualifying exams. At our university it’s called a Research Proficiency Exam (RPE). It needs to be a fully polished publication ready conference paper on original research work, a presentation of the work to the exam committee members and an oral exam. To prepare for this exam I locked myself in my home office for four months and worked an average of 5 hours per day on research/writing in LaTeX in addition to working 8 hours per day on my day job. I did not have time to climb but I was able to maintain my fitness by running 20 miles/week and lifting (1.2x+ times body weight) four times a week. Based on the feedback from the committee members, I was very satisfied with my exam presentation. However, the art of storytelling has room for improvement in my writing.

Rick has been instrumental in planning our vacation climbing trips which occurred in a much-desired timely fashion i.e. climbing trip to Squamish after spring term and climbing trip to Red Rocks and Joshua Tree after my RPE on Nov 8, 2023. After the exam we spent two weekends at Smith Rock practicing on real rock. I realized that my strength is still at Sport 5.11 and Trad 5.10 level however the speed is not the same due to lack of volume on real rock. This is why we had to adjust our goals at Red Rocks.

The Trip

This was my first time at Red Rocks, and I am in love with this place. Our itinerary is as follows:

Nov 18: Fly to Palm Springs.

Nov 19: Enjoy the pool and our favorite hot tub. Buy snacks from Costco and drive to Las Vegas through a dust storm and high winds. The wind was so strong that it was pushing the car off the road.

Nov 20: Late start to MysterZ (5.7) and scouting the area.

Nov 21: Frogland (5.8) with Mark.

Nov 22: Walk in downtown Vegas and check out Ceasar’s Palace.

Nov 23: Birdland (5.7+) and Cat in the Hat (5.6) Linkup. Our original plan was to climb a few 5.10 routes in Black Velvet Canyon as we stepped out of the car at 5am we realized that it would not be an enjoyable day as we get through the day and transform to frozen popsicles by being in shade all day with 8 mph wind and a high of 45 degrees F.

Nov 24: Dark Shadow (5.8) and drive back to Palm Springs. My favorite multipitch amongst all multi-pitches we did in Red Rocks.

Nov 25: Various single pitches at Joshua Tree with Mark. Leaping Learner (5.7+), Fote Hog (5.6 2 pitches), Double Cross (5.7+).

Nov 26: Dappled Mare (5.8) and fish cakes at the Korean restaurant in Yucca Valley.

Nov 27: Canyoneering at Indian Canyon, Palm Spring.

Nov 28: Run/Hike Cahuilla Peak in Palm Springs. 5.28 miles, 1100 feet in 1 hr 32 minutes door to door.

Nov 29: Fly back to PDX.

MysterZ

On Nov 20, we started hiking at 8:45am and got to the base of Jack Rabbit Buttress by 10:02am and topped out at 2:30pm. The hike to the base took us 1 hr. 16 minutes for 1.83 miles with an elevation gain of 689.4 feet. Since it was Rick’s second time on sandstone and he was more familiar with the quality of rock, I requested him to block lead this climb, and we agreed to simul-climb as much as possible. We did it in 3 pitches. With our radio communication — about how much rope is left, when a micro-traction is placed, when the follower starts climbing and when the follower needs a moment to pull a stuck piece — climbing has been a breeze. Climbing is fun and easy on high friction rock, but as we learned more about Red Rocks, it’s a lot about soloing in this area. Except Dark Shadows, none of the other routes protect closely and one must be very comfortable at the grade to run it out.

Experience on this climb and photos of each pitch is described as image captions. This route requires gear anchors for all the pitches.

The follower looking down after about 10 feet up on pitch 1.

The leader of the party was behind us (he was a guide and climbed very fast). From the visible ledge, the route traverses climber’s left on unprotected face.

Somehow portrait pictures increase the amount of scrolling on WordPress pages, so I decided to combine portrait pictures in collages. The left picture is taken after the unprotected face section. The right picture is taken at the summit.

Follower is at top of pitch 2 while the leader is leading pitch 3. The route veers left and has a bunch of easy climbing above.

The slab section is the top of pitch 3. Climber is shown as a blue dot on pitch 4. In the picture below you will see that the crack on pitch 4 is probably #5 or #6 size and therefore its heady run out face for the leader.

Pitch 4: run out face climbing. Pitch 4 ends above the chalkstone.

Rick at the base of pitch 5.

Pitch 5: Easy but again run out chimney at the start. Continue to climb beyond the tree and veer right.

Pitch 5 crux

Pitch 6: Rick chose the run out face while I climbed the offwidth/chimney which was fun and easy.

Looking down on offwidth/chimney section on pitch 6.

Heartthrob handsome waiting on top of pitch 6.

Pitch 7: Fairly easy pitch we both simul-cimbed with probably one #2 between us.

We had exactly 2 hrs 30 minutes of daylight left so we could not continue Armatron or Sweet Thin. Now that we know where to go on MysterZ, it will be an easy linkup in future. The scramble up to the base of Armatron is strenuous but certainly doable if one wants to link Armatron and Sweet Thin. The descend and hike back to the car took us 1 hr. 59 minutes and had an elevation gain of 243.7 feet.